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“The biggest challenge in maintaining a good silage preservation is maintaining an oxygen-free environment or, to put it another way, a carbon dioxide-rich environment,” observes Dr. Dave Davies of Silage Solutions Ltd, who acts as an independent consultant to the Silage Advisory Centres and Dow. Dave explains that “many of the undesirable storage processes occur as a result of the ingress of air or the egress of CO2. In fact, a high concentration of CO2 is more inhibitory to yeasts and moulds that deteriorate silage than low oxygen concentrations. Although, it is important to keep in mind that low levels of oxygen also play an important role in keeping some unwanted bacteria active, particularly Listeria.

There is a wide choice of forages that can be grown on UK livestock farms, such as maize, wholecrop cereals, fodder beet, brassica crops and Lucerne, but without doubt, grass is by far the biggest contributor on most farms. Grass is also the forage where the largest improvements in yield and quality could be made. There are very few farms where the quality of the swards would be termed as A1. It therefore follows that the best starting point is to understand what your most important asset is capable of. To do this, a sward assessment of each grass field on the farm is needed. How long has each field been sown for? What is the composition in percentage terms of perennial ryegrass, clover, broad leaved weeds such as docks, thistles and what is the percentage of poor quality weed grasses?